The Member of the Wedding

The Member of the Wedding, novel by Carson McCullers, published in 1946. It depicts the inner life of a lonely person, in this case 12-year-old Frankie Addams, a Georgia tomboy who imagines that she will be taken by the bride and groom (her brother) on their honeymoon. Frankie finds refuge in the company of two equally isolated characters, her ailing six-year-old cousin, John Henry, and her father’s black housekeeper, Berenice, who serves as both mother figure and oracle. Much of the novel consists of a series of kitchen-table conversations among these three. The threesome is broken by the cousin’s death and Berenice’s own wedding.

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